GASTON COUNTY, N.C. – As Halloween slowly approaches, usually the Gaston County Museum of Art and History would be taking the public out on a variety of ghost tours.

COVID-19 has changed all of that this year, but it’s forced the museum to get creative.

Joshua Braswell usually would be guiding people through the museum and organizing tours.

“I worked the ghost tours last year and I felt really bad that COVID was prohibiting our ability to get that many people together to take them on a tour," he says.  

Without physical tours this year, Halloween is looking pretty different for Braswell and the rest of the museum.

That’s why they decided to switch things up and launch the Camp Fire Tales.

Every Friday for the month of October the museum will post videos on their Facebook page of historical stories from Gaston County.

Braswell edits these videos but Alexander Brooks and many other staff members come up with ways to help tell these stories.

“There’s not many ghost tours where you actually go out on the water," he said. "So whenever we do this we wait until it gets dark and we get out on the river and it’s night time out there."

Last year people could sign up, grab a kayak and float down the Catawba River for a unique ghost tour experience.

“These particular tours are not sort of the jump scare type of person in the woods with a chainsaw type of tours," says Brooks. "There’s definitely a historical element to it, and as most good ghost stories are, they happen to have a history.”

Now everything is being filmed so that people can still enjoy a good ghost story virtually.

“They still want to have these things that they are use to the museum providing and we still want to give it to them, but we sort of have to be creative and think outside the box as to how are we going to provide that service to them," says Brooks.

COVID-19’s changing the museum in a lot of ways, but staff members are doing everything they can to make sure they continue engaging the community however that may be.

“The museum is more than just a place that you visit, says Braswell. "It’s an essential part of the community that provides services beyond the walls of our building.”  

The Gaston County Museum will release its next Camp Fire Tales video Friday, October 16 for the public.

You can check out some of their recent videos from their series here.